Ctenochasmatoidea
Archaeopterodactyloidea is an extinct clade of pterodactyloid pterosaurs that lived from the middle Late Jurassic to the latest Early Cretaceous periods of Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. It was named by Alexander Wilhelm Armin Kellner in 1996 as the group that contains Germanodactylus, Pterodactylus, the Ctenochasmatidae and the Gallodactylidae. Some researchers dispute the relationship of Germanodactylus to other members of the group, and instead use the terms Euctenochasmatia or Ctenochasmatoidea to describe the lineage of Pterodactylus, gallodactylids, and ctenochasmatids.

ken2077 · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- LophocratiaPBDB
- Diet
- piscivorePBDB, for Pterosauria
- Life habit
- volantPBDB, for Pterosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Pterosauria
Time the record covers
At least 59 million years on record.
The record covers at least 165.3 Mya to 106.3 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 168.2 Mya to 100.5 Mya.
30 occurrences of Ctenochasmatoidea on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
30 occurrencesThese are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
16 formations
- Yixian Formation · Jehol Group4
- Ksar Metlili Formation3
- Tacuarembó Formation2
- Quebrada Monardes Formation1
- Forest Marble Formation · Great Oolite Group1
- Grès de la Crèche inférieurs Formation1
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The named rock units Ctenochasmatoidea has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 8 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Ctenochasmatoidea and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Ctenochasmatoidea and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
273 taxa- Ctenochasmatidae7 sites
- Theropoda6 sites
- Pterodactyloidea5 sites
- Rhamphorhynchidae5 sites
- Osteichthyes4 sites
- Pterosauria4 sites
- Squamata4 sites
- Anura3 sites
- Crocodylia3 sites
- Dromaeosauridae3 sites
- Mammalia3 sites
- Ostracoda3 sites
- Sauropoda3 sites
- Actinopterygii2 sites
- Albanerpetontidae2 sites
- Allosauroidea2 sites
- Anoualerpeton unicus2 sites
- Atoposauridae2 sites
- Bivalvia2 sites
- Caturidae2 sites
- Caudata2 sites
- Choristodera2 sites
- Cryptodira2 sites
- Cteniogenys2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 27 sites for Ctenochasmatoidea, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
26 references- A new ctenochasmatid (Pterosauria, Pterodactyloidea) from the late Jurassic of Uruguay2
- New data on the microvertebrate fauna from the Upper Jurassic or lowest Cretaceous of Ksar Metlili (Anoual Syncline, eastern Morocco)2
- Palaeontology of the Purbeck-type (Tithonian, Late Jurassic) bonebeds of Chassiron (Oléron Island, western France)2
- The pterodactyloids from the Purbeck Limestone Formation of Dorset2
- <i>Petrodactyle wellnhoferi</i> gen. et sp. nov.: A new and large ctenochasmatid pterosaur from the Late Jurassic of Germany1
- A new pterodactyloid pterosaur with a unique filter-feeding apparatus from the Late Jurassic of Germany1
- New dinosaur tracks from the lower Barremian of Portugal (Areia do Mastro Formation, Cape Espichel)1
- New ctenochasmatid pterosaur record for Gondwana: discovery in the Lower Cretaceous continental deposits of the Atacama Desert, northern Chile1
- Vertebrate fossils from the Kimmeridgian of Brunn: the oldest fauna from the Solnhofen Archipelago (Late Jurassic, Bavaria, Germany)1
- Earliest filter-feeding pterosaur from the Jurassic of China and ecological evolution of Pterodactyloidea1
- A new archaeopterodactyloid pterosaur from the Jiufotang Formation of western Liaoning, China, with a comparison of sterna in Pterodactylomorpha1
- A new ctenochasmatoid pterosaur from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of western Liaoning, China1
Each of the 30 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. 14 further references are not listed. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Ctenochasmatoidea
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- ken2077
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Ctenochasmatoidea was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itLophocratia through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Unwin 1995)